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Thursday, July 9, 2015

I never thought I would say fuck New Zealand.
July 9th, 2015 I arrive at Auckland airport, and I am fully ready to start having fun.
I get my bag and head to customs/immgration, having no idea of what is about to happen.
The first customs officer takes one look at me and waves for me to go down some odd looking passageway,
I start thinking, hey, why am I not going where every body else is going?

Down the hallway, I reach what looks like a serious fucking search area, large metal inspection tables, twitchy sniffer dogs,
and plenty of pissed off looking people. I'm thinking, ok, this is not a big problem, they just put me here because I look like a stoner.
I see everybody else in this area also looks like a stoner, and then I notice one customs officier with a guys phone,
interrogating him about each message - at this point i'm starting to realize this could be some real shit.

Now its my turn, i'm hit with all kinds of questions about my plans in NZ, who am I, what do I do, etc.
In a subtle and almost indirect way,
I am then asked if I smoke cannabis.
I pause, remembering how honesty-is-always-best-policy, and admit that I do, and also point out that in California it is legal.
This sets off some sort of red alert, and I am quickly taken to the stoner lock down room.
In there I meet other travelers who are more or less obvious stoners, simply by the way they dress, and their natural calm demanor, it was pretty clear they wake-and-bake just like me.

Interrogation Part1

I am greeted by a bulky almost muscular short haired angry customs officer, who bombards me with questions of all kinds.
She asks me to list out all the drugs I have taken in my entire lifetime, and estimate how much of each one, it takes me a minute to recall:

crystal meth: one time - 3 hits

cocain: five times - about 20 lines

LSD: 10 tabs

shrooms: 20+ trips

weed: blazed everyday

I think to myself, I have a pretty light drug history. The interrogation was fully video tapped, with written notes, and hostile interrogator, it was kinda like being in a movie.
After about an hour of questions, she steps out of the room, and returns moments later with the final decision: I will not be allowed entry into New Zealand,
with the primary reason being that she thinks it is likely I would use cannibis while in NZ.
She asks if I have any comments, I say: not really, just that I now hate NZ and fuck NZ. Its back to stoner lock down room.

Interrogation Part2

The final part of getting kicked out of NZ is the police interview. The two officiers were actually nice guys and I enjoyed talking to them.
Their job was to assess if I had lost my mind about getting fucked over by NZ customs, basically after all this shit - was I a danger to myself or others.
I let them know, in the end, I was actually proud that I told the truth and was denied entry. The police also aggreed with me that weed is no big deal and NZ law needs to be updated asap.